


Lilith in Starlight

by jojotier



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Interspecies Relationship(s), Nymphs & Dryads, Outer Space, star nymphs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 01:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: The fallen star Lilith finally has the chance to go back to her life of running free through the cosmos, catching a ride out of the Earth's atmosphere by a lone human woman in the "year" of 1987. She realizes too late what that means.





	Lilith in Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! This is an idea I've been kicking around for a long time, about star nymphs and dark matter guards and a sci-fi twist on a fairytale format... Also, interspecies lesbianism. There's plenty of interspecies lesbianism here lmao
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Lilith settled on the kitchen counter, watching Isabelle bustle around with pots and pans and whatever might have been inside them. At first, it’d almost been a little frightening- when coming down to Earth, she’d never guessed these little creatures could change around the molecules of other things instead of themselves!- but after some time it was soothing to watch. For their size, humans were very good with their digits. For a human, Isabelle was very graceful with her hands.

It smelled sharp and sweet, like the nebula she hadn’t been too far from before. Ethyl formate wafted from the heated metal container, steam waving back at her. Lilith almost reached out and mingled with it, one spindly ‘arm’ evaporating before she thought better of it. 

She didn’t say anything, but Lilith could feel Isabelle’s feelings, echoing off her skin. Lilith wasn’t used to saying things in the way humans were- but even if she were, she probably wouldn’t have brought it up. It was an unspoken agreement, telegraphed as easily as if Isabelle’s human neurons met at the synapse with Lilith’s atoms.

Lilith was fine with not saying anything. She was waiting for the moment they were outside, out underneath the glimmering night sky.

“I shouldn’t need to make much,” Isabelle said in a light voice that sagged in the air where it tried to bounce. “I can’t take you the full way, anyway.”

Lilith’s ‘arms’ reformed into that human shape, form glowing dull red as she mimicked a posture she’d seen Isabelle take before- head resting on the arms, arms resting on the knees, taking a moment to just watch. It took Lilith a while to form the words. “... Even so, they should take me farther than this. They’re tethering me someplace fixed.” Speaking in human tongues was so restrictive- there was only a small range she could use, and going into the pitches that felt most comfortable just made her sound like a ‘church bell’, or so Isabelle had said. She wouldn’t have to use it for long.

“Isn’t there still an orbit?” Isabelle asked idly, brown hands stirring something sweet. It wasn’t the type of fuel Lilith ran on, so she’d neglected to learn what it was called- she wished she’d taken the time to learn. 

“Gravity, yes- but that’s the part that will fix me,” Lilith said, dipping in on herself a bit. “I’d have to stay with the rest of a galaxy. They might even make me take care of  _ planets.  _ I don’t want a solar system- boring.” 

“I guess not every star’s as planet hungry as ours, huh.” Isabelle mused, turning off the heat. 

“Ten is too many and they  _ know  _ it,” Lilith emphasized by flaring a little, striking her newly formed hand into a new position. “That makes them more of a planet fiend than a sun.”

“There’s a tenth planet?” Isabelle’s eyebrows raised, face turned towards her with a smile. “That would’ve been nice to know a few months ago, with that nutty professor.” 

“I never said anything.” Lilith huffed a bit, “Find it yourself.” 

Isabelle laughed with a sound that sounded like something much closer to what Lilith knew best- bells, clear and bright and stuttering. It felt like she did when she went by, high on elation and hypervelocity- no black hole to rein her in, no responsibilities or bad feelings. It was just herself walking on the tightropes of gravity and dark matter without letting them stick. And maybe if she was quick- once they left Isabelle safely in her orbit- she could outrun them again.

The atom heating device was turned off, allowing Isabelle to pour her concoction in a silvery thermos and screw it tight. After a moment she said, “Raspberry warmer- my mom started making it once I was legal. The heat burns most of the ethanol in the rum, and adding more sugar and raspberries makes it more like syrup- but there’s still just enough for some liquid courage.” 

“Smells sweet,” Lilith commented. “Kind of like a nebula I know of.”

“It’s very sweet,” Isabelle snorted softly, “Though I don’t know anything about nebulas. Would you like a taste?”

“I don’t have taste receptors.” Lilith reminded Isabelle. Strange, since this was one of the first bases they’d covered, once Lilith had found a way to communicate with her. 

Isabelle unscrewed the top and said, “That wasn’t quite what I meant,” before she took a sip. It took Lilith a little longer than she would have liked to realize what she meant, and her body ignited into blue-white heat. 

“Ah.” Lilith had long since learned that was the human expression for understanding, and perhaps, for amorous flustering. Or rather, being flustered and amorous. Flustered amorousness. English wasn’t her first language, so she supposed Isabelle would forgive that. Isabelle smiled and swallowed.

“Simmer down, Lily- I can’t kiss you like that.” She tapped her lips. “Human skin burns right up.” 

“Right up.” Lilith agreed and cooled herself down, plasma retreating into her body and condensing until her face reached an even brown. It was as low as she could make herself, which almost made her regret not learning if she could condense further. Even like this, they couldn’t touch often. With the flutter Isabelle put in her, it made it even harder to keep under control- but she still couldn’t help but wonder… 

Isabelle took another long draught from her thermos and moved forwards, touching Lilith’s newly formed face. Even though they’d done this a few times since the fiasco at the observatory a few months ago, it was still  _ new.  _ It had been one of the biggest surprises of coming here, of having to shrink herself down to the size of a human; there were many new things this world had to offer.

Or really. There were many new things that Isabelle had to offer.

They kissed, and Lilith could almost taste it- the red raspberry mingling with Isabelle’s skin. 

“There- some courage for you too.” Isabelle pulled away and rubbed a thumb over Lilith’s cheek, a condensed, fixed point she’d folded herself into. Then, she pulled away, closing her eyes for a few seconds too long to be a blink. 

“Let’s take you home, Lilith.”

Lilith’s temperature raised without her consent. Isabelle gathered her things in a little bag and started out, leaving Lilith no choice but to follow her. Outside, the night over the large tract of earth Isabelle owned stretched out, thousands of flickering echoes from stars like herself etched into it. A thousand different flashes and voices came, from ranges of millions of light years to just a few, making their way to earth.

Lilith had been in this little body so long that she’d almost forgotten what lay above.

She’d been waiting for this for so long...

Isabelle’s ship was small and handmade with care- a patchwork of metals nailed together in a pod just big enough for the human and Lilith if Lilith only shrunk a few nanometers inward. She’d seen Isabelle working hard on it, watched the few test flights she’d engaged in- it seemed like a perfectly worthy vessel. And if not, then those guards would have no choice but to bring Isabelle back safely.

Isabelle opened the reinforced glass hatch and held out a hand, stepping to the side. Lilith took it with a cooled hand, the rest of her body flowing into the back compartment. Isabelle stepped inside, and everything was quiet as the lights in front of them whirred. It was nothing Lilith could wrap her head around- the most she knew was fusion and how best to run to keep just out of reach of any black holes looking for a new spark. It was all the more impressive when she thought about how this little human had done it.

“Systems engaged,” Isabelle said in a quavering voice, so soft she almost certainly couldn’t have been talking to Lilith. The engine roared to life. “Fuel seems good, reactor working well… and…” Isabelle reached up to wipe at her eyes with the back of her hand. The little rocket ship shook wildly, and then left the ground, shooting up high into the sky. 

“We have lift off.” 

It wasn’t anything worse than what Lilith was used to- it was too weak to remind her of the more turbulent spots in asteroid fields, and certainly not as bad as those free roaming black holes near the eighty-eighth district. But even so, the shakiness made her atoms shake to their particles, to the point where she couldn’t even bring herself to mimic the shaky hands that controlled the spacecraft upwards.

Sixty-two of Earth’s miles were all they were traveling upwards. They barely had two minutes left.

It only dawned on Lilith that this was the last time…

“Isabelle,” Lilith said, grasping outwards. She couldn’t keep her shape right- the fingers kept growing longer, or her temperature was raising too much- but she wasn’t… “we. We need to-” 

Go back. Just for a few minutes more. She couldn't go so quickly-

“I know,” Isabelle said, and the tone of voice betrayed her. “I know… But it’ll be okay soon.” She took another deep drag of her so-called courage and continued to pilot the makeshift spacecraft upwards. Isabelle could feel herself shaking- she wasn’t… ready. Not really, not like she thought she was-

“Isa… belle…” Her voice forgot human language for a moment, echoing across the metal interior. 

“You said it hurt, being so small,” Isabelle said, gripping the plastic as the dark atmosphere outside slowly lightened to blue skies, encasing them both. “I’m sorry you have to be smaller now. Once you’re out, you’ll be free to…” She let out a shuddering breath, fluttering like a bird’s.

The line of the atmosphere was crossed, and Isabelle quietly set a helmet over her head. Flipping a few switches, she paused over one button, glancing back at Lilith. Lilith watched dark brown eyes, warm as the tiniest of stars, blink back tears. 

“Lilith…” She swallowed, and Lilith reached out. One more time… she just wanted to be able to hold onto Isabelle, just once. “I’ll see you again someday.” 

With just a button press, a hatch in the back opened. Lilith didn’t have the time to say anything- she didn’t have the time to say half of what she wanted to, now that she’d realized she’d missed it, all those present moments she wanted back dearly. She didn’t have the choice in the matter. She was let into the vast loneliness of the void she had called home, into the invisible arms of those dark matter guards that must have been waiting for eons for this moment.

She didn’t even catch a glimpse of Isabelle as she fell back to the Earth. She just saw her glimmering little ship, sailing down into the deep blue of the Earth. Then the tendrils of the cosmic void slowly ushered her atoms apart until she no longer had the ocular organs to see with.

She didn’t know why she didn’t run, in end. Why she went quietly, in the dark silence that hung heavy between the space of galaxies. She’d waited a long time for the moment to break free again- to go right back to dancing any place she wanted, barely luminous in the starlight.

Out here, though, she wasn’t a prisoner, and she wasn’t free. She was just another natural cog in the grand scheme of the universe. Another bit to be tethered in place.

At least she still had Lilith- the name Isabelle had given her.

The tethering process was much more painless than she thought. Or else, she had expanded back out into something so big she didn’t feel pain like she had back on Earth, being so small and buzzing.

Lilith rested in a blanket made of herself, millions of miles wide across, coiled about a new star; fixed along a preset path around a black hole. It wouldn’t be a painful or hard existence, she knew- stars, planets or no, didn’t have to do much more than their part. It would be dull, was the only frightening thing. A billion and more years of dull nothing, lazily spinning around a black hole in the middle of space, so far from anyone else like her that the most she could do was flash messages. 

Her mindset had shifted a bit, with her new core, but she still thought about her. A little creature, with a little ship, able to do big things.

Time didn’t exist the same way above as it did below.

So perhaps, then, that was what made her arrival such a pleasant surprise.

It only seemed like Lilith had slept for a moment- dozed off and laid dormant, like in her pile back on Earth. Then she looked around and saw a grand ship, enormous in its size and made with a strange pattern etched inside, like a quilt. It wasn’t her first time seeing new alien creatures- she’d met plenty during her travels long ago, and loved one, once.

It was a surprise to learn that she could still take a human form. She was almost afraid she had forgotten. She was far larger than any human would ever be- but she still shrank herself down, braving the discomfort of a smaller form to at least be at the same level as the ship. 

The hatch above opened and a human stood on deck, a far more technologically advanced suit wrapped around her. She didn’t seem to need the helmet anymore, wearing a strange necklace around her brown neck. She was aged, with more lines in her skin and with hair that had turned white- but her eyes were the same.

“What did I tell you?” Isabelle said, tilting her head back to look up at Lilith. “I told you I’d find you again.”


End file.
